When told that I could set down some ground rules, I asked people to make sure that they wrote more than three words at a time. Although this rule was good in theory, people began to interrupt the structured debate format with silly statements, which created ‘chat chaos’. It didn’t help that we were all in the room together while doing this, because talking accompanied thought about what to write about during the chat session.

Examples include: webinars, chat, second life.

The benefits of synchronous communication are that it can be used to create virtual classrooms.  Learners can come together and interact virtually communicating or meeting without having to physically be in the same place. Another benefit is that responses can be instantaneous and ideas can be shared.  This communication is live and can even be visual.  This makes it seem to learners that they are part of the action and are in it together with other learners.

Some of the driving forces in the environment include the increasing popularity of distance education.  It is also now being acknowledged that different parts of the world can interact across cultures.  This is also a very practical form of learning as for those with computers can choose to learn from different education providers in their location. This saves energy, time and money from having to travel distances to attend lectures and face-to-face classrooms in learning environments.  Thus giving learners more options.

Examples of asynchronous technology include blogs, wikis, podcasting and vodcasting – anything that can be created and then viewed by learners at different times. The benefits of this type of technology are that people in different time zones can participate in learning activities without having the constraint of time affecting them.  This gives them the liberty to learn at a time that is flexible and practical.

This technology allows learners to interact, contribute and comment on shared spaces. And many of these types of technologies can also group learners into communities thus allowing them to form networks and contacts that otherwise they would not have done.